They moved through the center of the ring but the enemy remained in a wider formation, allowing all of the ten ships to pound away at their targets. A muted roar sounded from somewhere aft and the entire bridge crew lurched backward.
“Contact delta two found a seam in the aft shielding,” the damage control officer announced in a loud voice. He made a visible effort to calm himself. “They got through with their point defense weapons, of all things. One of our eight pitch emitters is offline. She’s gonna handle like a stuck tree-boar.”
“Delta two is swinging her mains to concentrate on the same spot,” the sensor officer warned. He squinted, leaning in closer to his display – as if that would change his view at all – and he suddenly pounded a fist on his console. “She’s caught against the edge of the ring!” he nearly shouted.
Julia touched the icon representing the cruiser to port and opened a graphic projection. Sure enough, the huge ship was sliding sideways toward the ring and large sections of hull plating were tearing loose to tumble into the wide ribbon of the gravimetric anomaly.
As it came closer, the pace of disintegration accelerated. Major parts of the cruiser’s structure were torn outward, straining toward the ribbon until they broke loose and disappeared into the anomaly.
Then the ship seemed to reach some threshold and it was suddenly snatched into oblivion with incredible speed and violence.
“Good Lord,” the nav officer whispered. “Sucks to have your maps out of date, ‘dudnit?”
“Contacts delta one and delta five appear to be caught as well,” the sensor officer exulted. “They’re losing ground,” he added. “I don’t think they have the power to back out.”
“Don’t dwell on those two,” Hale ordered half a heartbeat before Julia would have said the same thing. “Set a marker on them and let us know if they become a problem. We still have a fight on our hands.”
The other two Human cruisers and their seven destroyers had sprung the trap, surging forward to pour fire on the enemy, relieving the pressure on Julia’s small decoy force.
”The N’Zim is coming under concentrated fire from contacts charlie two, delta three and delta four – all three are bow on.” The sensor officer checked a secondary screen. “Her shields are holding for now, but the contacts are starting to shift around to her sides.” He jerked his head back to the main screen as a flashing icon caught his eye. “Contact delta seven pushing in on our starboard beam!”
Julia turned to Hale. “The N’Zim can only take so much pounding, Captain. We need to give them supporting fire.”
Hale nodded. “Bring us about,” he ordered, indicating the new target on the holo. “Concentrate all fire on that cruiser.”
“Aye, sir,” the nav officer confirmed, “but we have that enemy destroyer on our flank…”
Hale grinned at him. “On our badly damaged flank, yes, but we have an updated map of the gravimetric veins. He doesn’t. Fire as your guns bear.” This last was to the grinning weapons officer.
“Aye, sir,” the nav officer confirmed. “Standing by to slave to gunnery.”
“Fire control has the helm,” the gunnery officer announced.
The buzz of the smaller rail guns on the hull began to vibrate the deck plating.
“Battery masking at thirty-eight percent,” the fire controller called out as the bow came around to aim at the target. “Twenty percent, ten… Battery masking stable at seven percent. We’re hitting them as hard as we can. Capacitors for the mains online in three, two, one… Firing, firing, firing!” The deck rumbled again and the tell-tale streaks of outgoing ordinance raced toward the remaining enemy cruiser.
“We missed the seam,” the sensor officer declared, “but that kind of pounding is going to strain their shields. Contact delta seven is approaching the outer edge of his firing envelope. He’ll be able to hit us in a matter of milli-days.”
“We’ve definitely caught his attention,” Julia said mildly. “Let’s hope he remembers his battle drills.”
The Grays built their ships for specific purposes and their destroyers were meant to be close-in brawlers. The large Human ships they used as their enemy-force model were covered in external weapons.
The closer a destroyer could get to its enemy, the less defensive fire it would take as the weapons farther away on the Human-built hulls would find themselves masked by sections of hull or even by other batteries.
The Grays employed battle drills to speed up the decision cycle. The less time a captain spent thinking about tactics, the better his chances of forcing the enemy to react to his decisions.
The destroyer captain coming at them was no exception. Even though the captured Gray cruiser was far lighter in defensive weapons, he turned his destroyer toward his target and accelerated to full pitch.
His first warning came when he fired his mains. The hundred-kilo slugs streaked away from his bows only to blink out of existence as they encountered the gravimetric vein.
“Oh… I think he might be on to our clever ruse,” the sensor officer announced before giving a slight shake of his head. He formed a more professional report. “Delta seven’s slowing down but still moving forward. I think he’s caught in the vein.”
Julia opened a visual window just as a pair of shuttles came rolling out of the destroyer’s forward hangar bay and slammed against its forward nav shielding. Once they’d been stopped, they slowly slipped through the shield and tumbled out of existence.
“I’m picking up a distortion alert from the destroyer’s coordinates,” the sensor officer warned. “Looks like he’s gonna try something desperate.”
Desperate indeed. “Back us off!” Julia ordered, not willing to wait for Hale. “Maximum pitch.”
“Navigation has the helm,” the nav officer declared.
The destroyer was falling into the ribbon bow first. The compression wave from the jump engine would include a section of the gravimetric anomaly and nobody had any idea what that would look like.
But the chances of it being a good thing for anyone involved were very slim.
“His envelope is forming,” the sensor officer advised, “but it’s happening freakishly slowly.”
It was a strange sight, the light being lensed by the distorted space. The front end of the destroyer seemed to stretch as the space in front of it began to compress. The stern appeared compressed as the space around it dilated. As the vessel’s jump engines began to move the bow wave forward, essentially moving space past a stationary ship, the danger became evident.
“The bow wave is pushing the gravimetric effects our way!” the sensor officer yelled. “I’m backing us off,” the helmsman shouted, “but, with one emitter down, we’re already handicapped. I’m losing ground!”
The deck plates ground against each other as the large cruiser struggled to keep her mass from falling into the ribbon. A loud, slow creaking grew in volume and a cable tray pulled loose from its mounts in the ceiling, tumbling down through the middle of the main holo display.
“Should we abandon ship?” the weapons officer asked her, his eyes wide.
“Absolutely not.” Julia shook her head. “The escape pods have an even lower power-to-mass ratio. They’d get sucked in long before the ship.” Unfortunately, that was the only answer she had at the moment. If there were some clever way out of this mess, she didn’t know it.
As fate would have it, the solution lay in the disaster itself. The enemy ship’s reactor was now close enough for the gravimetric anomaly to strip away some of its magnetic containment emitters, letting the reaction spill out into the ship.
A distortion engine is a very delicate beast and it normally operates under strictly controlled conditions. If it were to be disturbed by, for example, an unleashed fusion reaction, then all bets were off.
The reactor powering the main distortion drive was a fusion torus contained in a magnetic field and, when the field failed, the reaction quickly lost momentum and began to fizzle out. It had still spilled out of
containment at an incredible temperature, however, and it was enough to melt through to the distortion reactor beneath it and throw its delicate balance to hell.
The distortion array lost power, effectively mimicking the regular shutdown cycle, and the resultant bow wave of high-energy particles was released.
Distortion flash, after a long voyage, was energetic enough to use as a weapon, but the relatively short voyage of the Gray destroyer had only been enough to create a small blast.
Still, it was just big enough to save its enemy.
Everyone aboard Julia’s cruiser was hammered forward. Most of them had consoles to prevent them from doubling over entirely but Julia had been standing in the middle of the tactical holo, desperately casting about for an idea when salvation had slammed her to the floor.
She slid all the way to the front windows where she struggled to her feet. A glance at the tactical holo chilled her blood.
“Helm, all ahead full!” Hale roared.
They’d escaped the anomaly, but now they were drifting backwards into a different vein. The helmsman reacted quickly enough and they halted their backward motion before falling into its grip.
“Bring us back to bear on that cruiser,” Hale ordered, ignoring the look of surprised indignation on the face of the navigation officer.
The nav officer must have felt that their near-death experience entitled them to a rest. The enemy didn’t care how they felt, however, only that they made a good target. “Transfer the helm to gunnery,” Hale insisted darkly.
“Aye, sir,” the nav officer confirmed with a start. “Standing by to slave to gunnery.”
“Fire control has the helm,” the gunnery officer announced.
The buzz of hull weaponry was much louder this time as the ship was already pointed in more or less the right direction.
“Battery masking at seventeen percent,” the fire controller called. “Ten percent… Battery masking stable at seven percent. Mains online…”
The Gray escorts, delta three and delta four, were pushing forward to get at the N’Zim’s flanks and Hale came to a quick decision. “Belay!” The cruiser could wait. “Focus all batteries on delta three.”
The throaty hum of the lighter weapon turrets halted as they swung to bear on the new target. They resumed, slightly louder on the port side due to the damage already taken, and the ship continued rotating to bring her mains to bear.
“The mains bear,” the gunnery officer reported. “Firing, firing, firing!” The limited traverse of the main rails had finally managed to get the proper lead on the enemy destroyer and the deck rumbled with the energy of the departing slugs. The first shot came from the closer port side and then, a bare instant later, the starboard main added its voice as its sights achieved the appropriate lead on target delta three.
Julia couldn’t let herself tunnel vision on the target. She looked at the tactical holo and saw a destroyer closing in on her damaged starboard side – delta eight. She reached out to select the icons representing two Human-controlled destroyers, dragging them in a course that would bring them down on the enemies’ dorsal surfaces.
“Delta three is broken up,” the gunnery officer announced. “Targeting delta four.”
He’d had the sense to understand the danger they represented to the allied cruiser. If that second destroyer got in close to the flanks of Ava’s new flagship, they’d be able to wreak havoc at close range while avoiding most of the cruiser’s protective fire solution.
Of course, she had a destroyer trying to do the same thing to her own flagship. She put a hand on Hale’s shoulder and gave a barely perceptible nod to the approaching contact.
“Helm,” he growled, “give us one hundred eighty degrees of roll. I want our good side facing that destroyer.”
The holo view rotated around Julia, keeping her frame of reference the same despite the movement.
“Delta four is danger close,” the weapons officer advised. “Switching fire to charlie two.”
Julia nodded. The destroyer was far too close to Ava’s ship and they were almost as likely to hit friendlies as enemies at this point.
Two friendly destroyers were closing in on the last attacking cruiser from the sides and, though they’d taken a beating to get in close, they were now able to pour a withering fire against the enemy shields. Red-laced orange seams were starting to show in the cruiser’s defenses and it was only a matter of time before they would manage to burn through.
An emergency holo appeared, the shielding flashing a light green from the pounding Julia’s cruiser was now taking from delta eight. She looked at the friendly icons to confirm that help was indeed on its way before turning her attention back to the enemy cruiser.
It would have been foolish to turn her mains on the lone destroyer coming in on her flank. It was focused on her and could easily dance out of the way of her heavy rails. Far better to focus on eliminating the enemy’s most potent remaining weapon first and rely on more maneuverable allies to scrape off the destroyer.
The deep rumble shook the decking again and two streaks raced toward the remaining enemy cruiser. They passed within a slightly-risky distance of a friendly destroyer and slammed into the shielding. The massive kinetic energy was transmitted back to the cruiser’s shield generator where heavy shock mounting, already strained by the punishment taken so far, finally sheared away and the generator was pushed around on the one remaining mount until it also failed from the extreme torsion.
Amazingly, the generator kept running on capacitors for a few moments and a cruiser-shaped shield swung around in empty space, colliding with the attacking destroyer.
The destroyer, far heavier than the shield generator, suffered no damage and, as soon as the ghostly, empty shield cut out, they fired into the hull of the Gray ship.
“Hold fire!” Hale ordered. Their outgoing rounds stood a good chance of slicing straight through the stricken ship to hit their own destroyer on the far side.
“Bring us around to face delta eight,” he ordered but the destroyer was already turning to face fire from the two Human-run ships. Delta eight broke nearly in two from a focused salvo from both ships.
“Where’s delta six?” she demanded, eyes searching the display.
“Lost her in the gas,” the sensor officer replied. “I think she’s made a run for it. We saw a slight distortion out here.” He enlarged a data marker in the holo. “It’s consistent with a jump out.”
She bit back an angry reply. These weren’t Marines or Naval professionals. If she expected certain behavior from them, she would have to make it as plain as possible. She could see from the holo that the fight was over now and so she took a deep breath.
“That’s the kind of thing I need to know about as soon as it happens,” she told the officer. “In the heat of the fight, it may seem less important than a thousand other things but, if an enemy ship has left the fight, I have to know, otherwise I’m going to be reserving forces that might otherwise have been used to back up a friendly elsewhere.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The man nodded, lips tight in the standard expression of one who’s screwed something up.
“Good.” She allowed her expression to soften a little. “Otherwise, good work.” She turned her head to take in the rest of the bridge. “Well done, everyone. Now let’s regroup and finish the job.”
The one destroyer making a run for it had been a stroke of good luck, saving them from having to inexplicably leave one enemy cargo transport intact. Now they had a credible witness.
She selected all the ships from both fleets and dragged their icons out to the position they’d originally held, just outside the goat’s horn. By using the icons, she was able to pass orders through the fleet without any tell-tale Human voice commands being intercepted.
The two cruisers and seven destroyers exited the dense gas of the nebula to find the eighteen transports trying to scatter, each desperately trying to find the effect horizon of the artificial singularities so they could jum
p away to safety. The nine warships formed a firing plane and, on a signal from the flagship, opened up on the unarmed vessels.
As far as Grays were concerned, they were committing the worst crime imaginable. They were ending lives that had spanned thousands of years and there would be no chance of them resurrecting in new clone bodies.
And they were doing it posing as Purists.
This would go a long way toward keeping the Grays too busy with internal affairs to meddle in the colonies. The Gray Quorum would take it as a sign that the Purists were escalating their methods and the detention of high-ranking suspects would begin within days.
The Purists would take note of the example their brethren had supposedly set and consider following suit. Adding to that the fact that the Quorum would now be openly moving against them, it was very likely that events would spin out of control on their own from this point.
Still, Julia had one more target in mind to ensure a civil war in the Gray territories. She frowned as the last enemy transport was smashed.
Maybe the Universe really did have a fondness for circles.
Chitari Outpost
“Returning to normal space in five, four, three, two, one… transition complete.” Robin looked up at the feedback holo. “Chitari Outpost is right in front of us.”
“Very good,” Hale replied calmly. “Let’s give them a moment to read our registry transponder.”
N’Zim was really proving his value. He’d been able to discover a way to tamper with the ship’s identification, preventing the Grays from realizing the Ava Klum was the same ship taken by Humans.
Julia looked intently at the holo projection of the outpost on the small moon’s surface. This place held bad memories for her. “They should have had enough time by now, Captain Hale. Let’s knock on the front door.”
He nodded at the gunnery officer. “Point defense batteries only.”
The smaller weapons began buzzing as they poured a hail of fire on the rogue moon. This had been where Julia and Paul had landed to set up an emergency beacon. They hadn’t even exited their small export-market Gray shuttle when they’d been captured by a small wing of Gray attack craft that had emerged from an underground hangar.
Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2) Page 25